


precedence shall be the order

by mockturtletale



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Harvey thinks he can’t trust Donna then what hope has Mike got?</p>
            </blockquote>





	precedence shall be the order

**Author's Note:**

> Deals with the immediate fall out after the conclusion of S2E05 - 'Break Point'. Spoilers galore for anyone who hasn't caught up to that episode, and imminently set to be joss'd by S2E06!

Mike comes to stand next to Rachel, and together they watch as Donna walks toward Harvey, box in hand. 

Harvey is there to stop Donna, Mike thinks. To tell her to stay. 

Even as he admits to Rachel that he didn’t think it would come to this, Mike doesn’t really believe that it has, or that Harvey is about to let Donna walk away. 

But Harvey presses the button, and then watches as Donna leaves. 

The elevator doors close and Donna disappears from view. Harvey turns to see Mike standing there, and their eyes meet, and Donna is gone. 

For a split second, Harvey looks at Mike with something like guilt in his eyes. He looks at Mike like he’s been caught doing something he’s not at all proud of having done, and then he turns and walks away. 

 

\----

 

Mike goes back to his cubicle, and finishes up his work. Rachel leaves about an hour before he does, stopping by his desk to say goodnight and leaving with him the warm weight of her hand on his shoulder. She’s going to miss Donna too, Mike knows, but she doesn’t touch him in commiseration. 

Rachel touches him as if to remind him that she’s still here. 

 

\----

 

Mike doesn’t think about it. He gathers his things, thumbs the button on his monitor, and stands to leave. 

The corridors are dark as Mike walks through them. He doesn’t see a single person before he reaches Harvey’s office. 

Harvey’s office is dark too. 

Mike stands in the elevator with his left hand curled tight around the strap of his bag - slung across his body like a weapon, like protection; his right hand fluttering jerkily to music he isn’t actually listening to. 

Tonight is the first night Mike can remember in a long time when slipping out into the city, full of bright lights and loud, bright people, feels like relief. 

 

\----

 

Mike doesn’t think about it until he gets home. 

He drops his bag by the door and hangs up his jacket, but he can’t bring himself to do more than roll up the sleeves of his shirt and tug the knot in his tie low enough that he can undo his top button beneath it. 

Every night when Mike gets home from work the first thing he does is change into the most comfortable thing he can find, sweatpants and worn, loose shirts and socks that make his feet slip on the hardwood floors of his apartment. He comes home and needs a few hours to stay here, to feel like he isn’t just catching up on however many hours of sleep he can afford before he has to go back, even though he knows that’s the truth. Mostly he doesn’t mind, but the illusion helps him be better at work and better at home - the clearer the divide the easier it is to know what’s expected of him where and by whom. 

Tonight he can’t force it. He doesn’t want to leave work behind. He can’t go home until he knows what he’ll have to face the next day. 

So Mike unbuttons the top button of his shirt and leaves his tie hanging open around his neck. He loosens the laces on his shoes, but their crisp, heavy clack against the floors of his apartment serves as a metronome for his night, the noise loud like it never is in the office - muffled by expensive carpet and the nervous way he still finds himself pacing the floors. 

Mike paces here. He needs to think, and he thinks best on his feet. 

 

\----

 

Mike could go to Harvey. 

Mike should go to _Donna_. 

He thinks about whether or not Donna would see him. He pictures her opening the door, hoping he’s Harvey, and holding up a hand and wordlessly shutting the door in his face when she sees that he’s not. She wouldn’t mean anything by it, but Mike can’t help her anymore. 

So he thinks about going to see Harvey instead. 

If Mike is honest with himself - that’s what he really, truly wants to do. 

He feels a sense of obligation toward Donna, some degree of responsibility for everything that’s happened and so, so much regret for how he couldn’t do anything to prevent it; to make it easier on everyone involved. He wants to apologize to Donna for something that he clearly, logically sees can’t possibly be his fault, and he wants to do anything within his power to make it better. That would make Mike feel better. 

His reasons for wanting to see Harvey aren’t nearly so straightforward or altruistic. 

 

\----

 

Mike’s something dangerously close to furious with Harvey for letting this happen. He doesn’t know how to process what he saw tonight in order to find himself left with his image of Harvey as it was before - that of someone that Mike is terrified by the absolute capability of. It’s cliched, but Mike doesn’t want to know about Harvey’s limitations. He doesn’t want to believe that Harvey can fail, and he doesn’t know if he does believe that Harvey has failed Donna, because if that variable is true for Mike’s picture of Harvey, then everything else he’s ever thought of him might not be - _couldn’t_ be. 

The Harvey that Mike knows would never let Donna leave. 

But then, that Harvey hasn’t exactly been showing up to work lately. 

Since Hardman’s been back, there’s been something like a sheen of desperation to Harvey that Mike doesn’t like to look too closely at. There are times when Mike can’t look at Harvey at all, because the shape his face takes is too close to frayed, his expressions too much like careful, poised overture. 

It’s been worse since Tanner came back to town, dragging behind him his every intention to take Harvey and Pearson Hardman down. 

Harvey is playing catch up. Mike has often saved the day, but he’s never before felt like Harvey really needed him to. Harvey won’t ever actually ask Mike for anything, but the fight to make him accept help is easier than ever, and the gratitude Harvey won’t articulate is palpable. 

Mike feels responsible now in ways that he’s been fighting to earn since day one, but he didn’t want it like this.

Mike doesn’t want to be what Harvey needs. He wants to be what Harvey wants. 

 

\----

It takes Mike all of an hour to remember what he knows - that no matter what’s going on he can always trust Harvey to know what’s best. Even if his hands are tied and he can’t act, Harvey never gets that part wrong. 

So Mike trusts Harvey to know what they need, now. 

He grabs his jacket and pockets his phone, doesn’t even think about calling first, and definitely doesn’t think about how when he pulls the door to his apartment closed behind him, he feels like he’s headed home for the first time today. 

 

\----

 

It’s only when he sits back against the worn leather interior of a cab that Mike realizes deciding to do this is only half the battle. 

He gets out of the car three blocks from Harvey’s condo and walks, because he’s got some thinking to do before he faces Harvey. 

 

\----

 

Possible Scenario # 1: Harvey hits the bottle in his hour of need, and Mike will find him wasted and messy for the first time ever. 

This is a day of firsts, and Mike can’t completely discount this option. When Harvey is pissed off at Mike, he talks to Donna. When Harvey is arguing with Jessica, he talks to Donna. Mike doesn’t know if Harvey is mad at Donna still, or whether that’s been taken over by his anger at himself and frustration with the situation period, but Mike can’t imagine any scenario that sets him up as an adequate stand-in for Donna in any regard.

He could give it a shot, though. If it comes to that. 

 

\- 

 

Possible Scenario #2: Harvey’s pride and resolute inability to accept an outcome that doesn’t realize each and every one of Harvey’s wants and needs mean that Harvey will become obsessed with fixing this, and Mike’s about to walk in on him pacing and plotting, ranting and ruthless. 

Mike is a little ashamed of how this option sort of instantly appeals to him, but he knows that’s just the latent fanboy in him hoping against hope that his idea of Harvey as inhuman and indestructible will be restored once more to its full former glory. 

That’s Mike-of-six-months-ago, though, and Mike-of-recent knows better. Literally. He knows that Harvey is better than inhuman or indestructible, because he’s human and he’s flawed and sometimes Mike knows things that Harvey doesn’t. Life doesn’t get any better than that. Harvey may scoff and protest weakly that whatever these things are they’re irrelevant or inaccurate or both, but he has to try just a touch too hard to sell his indignation, and Mike cherishes these small victories. 

If Harvey can accept Mike’s help, they can deal with this. Together, they can figure it out. 

 

-

 

Possible Scenario # 3: Mike finds Harvey having completely fallen to pieces over this. 

It doesn’t seem especially likely, given everything Mike has learned and catalogued about Harvey’s character so far, but this is about _Donna_. She’s gotten underneath the bravado, the loud, mocking pride and the trash talk that Harvey wears like something he has earned. A right he has won - picked up in bits and pieces from each and every victory he has claimed. Donna came before that. Donna still comes before that. 

Mike doesn’t know anything about Harvey without Donna. 

 

\- 

 

Possible Scenario # 4: Harvey refuses to accept it, because he isn’t able to deal with it.

He’ll shut the door in Mike’s face, or dismiss him with yet another empty threat to move, and he won’t talk to him about this or anything else. 

That one scares Mike the most. 

He can deal with whatever he finds, but he doesn’t know how he’ll be able to walk away if Harvey won’t let him in. 

 

\- 

 

Possible Scenario # 5: Harvey will have a plan, and Harvey will be determined to either fix this or accept it for however impossible it may in fact be to fix. Harvey won’t tell Mike which it is, or how this is going to work. Harvey won’t trust Mike now, because if Harvey thinks he can’t trust Donna then what hope has Mike got? 

Mike knows how Donna feels, and he can see why she did what she did so much clearer than Harvey will ever be able to. That doesn’t mean that he’d have done the same thing, had he found himself in her position, but maybe Mike’s understanding will be enough to discount him for Harvey, here. 

Donna made every decision she made with a mind toward protecting Harvey - but she wasn’t honest with him, and that trumps loyalty for Harvey. Dishonesty negates trust, and Harvey already knows that Mike knew what Donna had done before Harvey did. That he knew and didn’t make telling Harvey his first priority. 

Harvey is Mike’s first priority, and he didn’t tell him everything right off the bat because Mike wanted to make it so that he’d never have to. He was hoping and praying that something would change, something would shift and Harvey would never have to know. Mike has a lot of respect for Donna, and a reverence for her relationship with Harvey, so he hadn’t thought (and still doesn’t think) that it’s his place to wade in between them, but he would have. If his telling Harvey could have made things better for Harvey, that would have been the first thing Mike would have done. Instead he held out, and that could seriously come back to bite him in the ass now. 

Harvey can roll with anything once he knows all the pertinent details, but having someone he trusts hide something from him - regardless of their motivations to do so - is unacceptable to him, and a failure on his part, as he sees it. Betrayal he should have seen coming. 

Mike hasn’t lied to Harvey since the day he was hired. 

Harvey is the only person Mike isn’t constantly lying to. 

But his failure to disclose may yet cost him the only honest relationship he still has. 

 

\----

 

It’s definitely going to come down to one of those, or some combination thereof, maybe, Mike decides as he sidesteps couples walking hand in hand and smiles automatically, defensively, at anyone who looks his way. 

He takes the steps to Harvey’s building in sure strides and then takes the steps upstairs in a jerked, determined jog. Now that he’s pre-mapped the territory that awaits, Mike doesn’t have the patience to wait. 

He takes a deep breath before he knocks, and doesn’t think about the two occasions before tonight when he’s done the very same thing. 

 

\----

 

Harvey opens the door with a drink in his hand. 

He’s changed out of his clothes from the office, and stands before Mike now wearing dark grey jeans and a white long sleeve henley that’s been pushed up to his elbows. His hair is still damp from the shower, standing loose and tousled. He looks at Mike like he’s not at all surprised to see him, but not especially pleased by the sight either. 

The tumbler in his hand is full, and when Mike pushes past him to get inside he takes a subtle sniff of his breath, and smells nothing but minty toothpaste. 

Harvey isn’t drunk. He lets Mike in, puts his drink down on the counter and doesn’t pick it back up again that night. 

(Mike empties it down the sink the next morning, and washes and dries the glass by hand, stretching up on tiptoe to put it back on the shelf above Harvey’s coffee maker.) 

 

\----

 

“There’s nothing I can do,” Harvey says without preamble, sitting next to Mike on the couch but looking out over his spectacular view of the city instead of looking directly at Mike. 

“We just have to get on with it, we’ve got bigger things to worry about right now,” he says, and Mike nods, but frowns. Harvey sees neither, because he doesn’t turn to finally face Mike until he says, 

“I wish I could say I knew a way to get us out of this mess, but if we’re to survive, Donna can’t be our focus. We’ll get her back, but we’ve got to win this case first.” 

So to summarize: Mike’s been wrong about pretty much everything. Every single scenario he imagined on his way over here is playing out in the exact reverse. And that’s a glorious thing. 

Mike sags in relief, and sits back on the couch, throwing his arm up over the back of it behind Harvey, who lifts an eyebrow at the gesture. Mike doesn’t laugh out loud in his delight, but it’s a close thing. 

“Okay,” is all he can think to say to how Harvey has just completely put his mind at ease and dissected, accepted, and presented the situation as it stands to Mike. 

“Okay?” Harvey asks, incredulous, either because Mike is kind of putting the moves on him here a little bit - with the casual stretch of his arm and the flirtatious tilt of his head, the way he’s leaning just slightly into the heat of Harvey’s side and pushing his knee to rest against Harvey’s - or because he hadn’t been expecting Mike to accept this all so easily. 

“If that’s what we’ve gotta do,” Mike says, and then, “if you ….” 

He starts to say ‘if you still trust me enough to depend on me,’ but now isn’t the time to drag up his own insecurities, Mike thinks. This doesn’t have to be about that. 

But,

“If I what,” Harvey prompts, twisting in his seat to face Mike properly, mirroring the tilt of Mike’s head in a way that’s just deliberate enough to send a shiver of hopeful lust up Mike’s spine, more than enough to distract him and pull an answer from him with the misdirect. 

“If you still trust me,” he says, and Harvey smiles and ducks his head. 

Mike can’t believe Harvey is smiling. And smiling at that, of all things. He wants to reach out and trace the shape of it with his fingertips, wants to do something that will earn him that smile as his to keep, because he doesn’t want to forget it and mere memory won’t be enough. 

“You think that because Donna lied to me and did something that cost her her career and jeopardizes mine, that means every minuscule inclination to trust I’ve ever experienced has been wiped out,” Harvey says, grinning in a way that’s both toothy and kind. 

“Well … _yeah_ ,” Mike says, although he’s close to speechless, because even he and his painfully loyal overestimation of Harvey and Harvey’s abilities couldn’t have predicted this. 

Harvey sighs, and looks away to look down at his hands, showing for the first time a real sense of regret and frustration for all of this. 

“Donna and I are gonna have a long talk one of these days, and nothing either of us say will make me happy about what happened here, but nothing could undermine our … working relationship. Not for me.” 

“But I didn’t tell you when I found out,” Mike blurts, unable to resist. He’s very definitely lost his footing in this conversation and he’s in absolute unknown territory right now, but all he can do is keep being honest. It’s a terrible trait, and one he’s struggled so hard to break himself of as of late, but Harvey remains his lone area of proud failure in that regard. 

Harvey sighs, and then shrugs. It looks like it takes effort. 

“I’m not ecstatic about you lying to me, but you telling me as soon as you found out wouldn’t have changed anything. Even if you’d told me, Donna had destroyed the memo before I’d have had a chance to get to her, so. It wouldn’t have turned out any differently. And if you’d thought I really needed to know something, you would tell me.” 

Harvey narrows his eyes for that last part, but he doesn’t ask Mike to confirm or deny that assertion on his part, he knows it’s true and that’s more than a relief to Mike. 

“You trust me,” Mike says, grinning so widely he’s worried it might stick. 

Harvey doesn’t smile back, though. He looks away, and when he looks back at Mike there’s a kind of determination in his eyes that Mike rarely gets to see, because it’s rarely necessary for the things Harvey finds himself tasked with. Whatever he’s thinking about right now isn’t an easy win. 

“Mike … when Jessica wanted to fire you, I told her we were a package deal. You go - I go.” 

Mike knows that already, knows it _now_ , but he doesn’t have to fake his surprise at hearing Harvey admit it, because he’d been sure he never would. Not on pain of death. Mike doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“This thing with Donna …” Harvey continues, getting up off the couch and walking to the window, speaking to the glass and every light in the city below them instead of to Mike. 

“Donna is Donna, and you know what that means. But we’re … you’re different. Donna is loyal to me, and I’m as good to her as I can be - as anyone could be. But you and I …” Harvey turns back to face Mike, and even though he’s all the way across the room Mike’s breath catches in his throat because this could go either way right now, or it could be nothing at all like Mike’s imagining and he doesn’t know which out of those series of events would be more unfortunate. 

“I don’t tell Donna everything. I don’t even tell her most things. And I’m not saying that I’ll tell you everything, either, but I will tell you everything you need to know. Everything you want to know, if I can.” 

That’s both more and less than Mike had been expecting, not to mention a whole lot more than he knows how to deal with. Because _what_? Where is this coming from? Mike isn’t about to refuse it, or let them go back to whatever tenuous set of ‘all-powerful senior partner and lowly servant/associate’ he’s been struggling to deny for months now, not if he doesn’t have to. And Harvey is giving him an out here, that much at least is clear. 

“So I’m … what? Your protege? Your secret weapon? You trust me to trust you and together we take over the city, then the world?” 

Harvey folds his arms over his chest and leans back against the window, surveys Mike as if he’s just as interesting a view as the one on the other side of that glass. He watches him for a long moment, waiting for something, it seems, and then he shakes his head and his carefully blank expression crumbles, leaving Harvey’s face more naked than Mike has ever seen it, ever seen at all, maybe. 

“You’re not a weapon, Mike. You’re the opposite of that. You’re … a laying down of arms. Not everything is about winning or losing, so it’s about time I had something that’s neither. Both. I’m giving this everything I’ve got. We’ll win together and we’ll lose together, but you’re not a means to an end to me, Mike. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

Mike knows that they work well together. Because they work _brilliantly_ together. They've achieved a kind of balance in their working relationship that's unparalleled when Harvey lets it be that of two equals, of two people bringing to the table whatever they can to solve the problem at hand. That's not an allowance Harvey makes often, but when he does they become unstoppable. In those moments, Mike feels as close to understood, to seen and matched than he's ever gotten before in his life, and more than he's ever thought possible. If that's to become his reality, if that's what Harvey wants .... then that's almost enough to make Mike want to give up on his pipe dream of getting to have sex with Harvey, because that just feels too greedy at this point. 

_Almost_ is the key word in that sentence, though. The word of the day. Triple word score, final answer, no Mike would not like to phone a friend because anyone he spoke to right now would quite rightly advise him not to do what he’s about to do. He knows that, and he knows he shouldn’t, but he’s going to anyway because he doesn’t lie to Harvey and if they’re moving on from this as equals then this is his last chance to clear the air. 

“Okay. But in the interest of full disclosure, let me just say before we move into the next phase of our saga that I’ve got something of a monstrous crush on you. It won’t be a problem and I’m sorry to even bring it up, but honesty is key and I need to know that I’ve said it before I can move on. So … there. Done and dusted. Sorry,” Mike finishes, wincing, because that delivery could have gone a lot better. 

Considerably better, if the way Harvey reaches for the bridge of his nose is any indication. 

“Doesn’t it ever get tiring,” Harvey says eventually, scrubbing his hand back through his hair and then letting his arms fall back down by his sides, “being so far ahead of everyone else all the damn time?” 

“Yes, excruciatingly so,” Mike answers automatically, before he can even begin to wonder why Harvey’s asking. 

But then Harvey is crossing the room in three strides and pulling Mike up off the couch, dragging Mike right up against him and kissing him like every single moment of their relationship to date has been a struggle not to do this. He digs his fingers hard into one side of Mike’s waist, and carefully lifts Mike jaw up into his with one hand, and for the first time Mike can ever, ever remember - he stops thinking. He pushes up into the kiss and curls his fingers into the front of Harvey’s shirt and yanks him down, and when they meet in the middle it’s perfect. Harvey lets Mike lick into his mouth, and hums in a buzz against Mike’s lips when their tongues first brush together. He sucks at Mike’s lower lip until it’s tingling fat and flushed, and he keeps kissing Mike like he _means_ it. And then he pulls away. 

“This can’t be our priority right now either,” he says, and his voice is low and close. Mike wants to kiss him again, but he knows that Harvey is right. 

Mike is elated, and he can’t even begin to untangle the knot of tonight’s events to figure out how they got him here - with everything he wants, but he knows that Harvey has a point. 

When Harvey steps away, Mike doesn’t protest. 

“Step one - save the firm. Step two - get Donna back. Step three -” 

Harvey halts his presentation to lean in to kiss Mike again, quickly and so easily that Mike sways a little on his feet. Harvey smiles a crooked, pleased grin at him. 

“Step four - profit?” Mike asks, dazed, and Harvey’s grin becomes laughter. He reaches for Mike’s hand and they stand like that together in Harvey’s living room - facing one another and holding hands, smiling bright, dopey smiles. 

“Knowing you? Exorbitantly so. The feds will be knocking down the door.” 

“I love it when you talk fraud,” Mike murmurs, gaze catching on Harvey’s mouth, and this can’t be their priority. At least not all the time. 

But for now, Harvey can tug Mike away to his bedroom, and Mike can fall gracelessly down onto Harvey’s sheets, and they can afford to spend a few hours breathless and laughing, wringing out sounds that they hide against one another’s skin. 

 

\----

 

The next morning Mike makes breakfast, and Harvey watches from where he sits perched on the counter, bare foot and quiet in a way that doesn’t worry Mike for the first time in days. 

They eat together as they argue over the crossword, and then they get dressed and set out to fix this. 

 

\------------------  
\------------------


End file.
